Vowel harmony
Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels that occurs in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on which vowels may be found near each other. Terminology : The term vowel harmony is used in two different senses. In the first sense, it refers to any type of long distance assimilatory process of vowels, either progressive or regressive. When used in this sense, the term vowel harmony is synonymous with the term metaphony. In the second sense, vowel harmony refers only to progressive vowel harmony (beginning-to-end). For regressive harmony, the term umlaut is used. In this sense, metaphony is the general term while vowel harmony and umlaut are both sub-types of metaphony. The term umlaut is also used in a different sense to refer to a type of vowel gradation. This article will use "vowel harmony" for both progressive and regressive harmony. "Long-distance" Harmony processes are "long-distance" in the sense that the assimilation involves sounds that are separated by intervening segments (usually consonant segments). In other words, harmony refers to the assimilation of sounds that are not adjacent to each other. For example, a vowel at the beginning of a word can trigger assimilation in a vowel at the end of a word. The assimilation sometimes occurs across the entire word. This is represented schematically in the following diagram: : In the diagram above, the Va (type-a vowel) causes the following Vb (type-b vowel) to assimilate and become the same type of vowel (and thus they become, metaphorically, "in harmony"). The vowel that causes the vowel assimilation is frequently termed the trigger while the vowels that assimilate (or harmonize) are termed targets. When the vowel triggers lie within the root or stem of a word and the affixes contain the targets, this is called stem-controlled vowel harmony (the opposite situation is called dominant). This is fairly common amongst languages with vowel harmony and may be seen in the Hungarian dative suffix: : The dative suffix has two different forms ''-nak/-nek''. The ''-nak'' form appears after the root with back vowels (a'' and ''o are both back vowels). The ''-nek'' form appears after the root with front vowels (ö'' and ''e are front vowels). Features of vowel harmony Vowel harmony often involves dimensions such as * Vowel height (i.e. high, mid, or low vowels) * Vowel backness (i.e. front, central, or back vowels) * Vowel roundedness (i.e. rounded or unrounded) * tongue root position (i.e. advanced or retracted tongue root, abbrev.: ±ATR) * Nasalization (i.e. oral or nasal) (in this case, a nasal consonant is usually the trigger) In many languages, vowels can be said to belong to particular sets or classes, such as back vowels or rounded vowels. Some languages have more than one system of harmony. For instance, Altaic languages have a rounding harmony superimposed over a backness harmony. Even amongst languages with vowel harmony, not all vowels need participate in the vowel conversions; these vowels are termed neutral. Neutral vowels may be opaque and block harmonic processes or they may be transparent and not affect them. Intervening consonants are also often transparent. Finally, languages that do have vowel harmony often allow for lexical disharmony, or words with mixed sets of vowels even when an opaque neutral vowel is not involved. point to two such situations: polysyllabic trigger morphemes may contain non-neutral vowels from opposite harmonic sets and certain target morphemes simply fail to harmonize. Many loanwords exhibit disharmony. For example, Turkish vakit, ('time' [from Arabic waqt]); *''vak'ı'''t would have been expected. Underspecification See Neutralization, archiphoneme, underspecification for an explanation of archiphoneme and neutralization with an example of a Tuvan archiphoneme involved in vowel harmony. Examples in selected languages Vowel harmony appears in many Uralic and almost all Altaic languages. Uralic languages Finnish In the Finnish language, there are three classes of vowels – front, back, and neutral, where each front vowel has a back vowel pairing. Grammatical endings such as case and derivational endings – but not enclitics – have only archiphonemic vowels A, U, O, which are realized as either back or front inside a single word. From vowel harmony it follows that the initial syllable of each single (non-compound) word controls the frontness or backness of the entire word. Non-initially, the neutral vowels are transparent to and unaffected by vowel harmony. In the initial syllable: # a back vowel causes all non-initial syllables to realize with back (or neutral) vowels, e.g. pos+ahta+(t)a → posahtaa # a front vowel causes all non-initial syllables to realize with front (or neutral) vowels, e.g. räj+ahta+(t)a → räjähtää. # a neutral vowel acts like a front vowel, but does not control the frontness or backness of the word: if there are back vowels in non-initial syllables, the word acts like it began with back vowels, even if they come from derivational endings, e.g. sih+ahta+(ta) → sihahtaa cf. sih+ise+(t)a → sihistä For example: * kaura begins with back vowel → kauralla * kuori begins with back vowel → kuorella * sieni begins without back vowels → sienellä (not *''sienella'') * käyrä begins without back vowels → käyrällä * tuote begins with back vowels → tuotteeseensa * kerä begins with a neutral vowel → kerällä * kera begins with a neutral vowel, but has a noninitial back vowel → keralla Some dialects that have a sound change opening diphthong codas also permit archiphonemic vowels in the initial syllable. For example, standard 'ie' is reflected as 'ia' or 'iä', controlled by noninitial syllables, in the Tampere dialect, e.g. tiä ← tie but miakka ← miekka. ... as evidenced by tuotteeseensa (not *''tuotteeseensä''). Even if phonologically front vowels precede the suffix ''-nsa'', grammatically it is preceded by a back vowel-controlled word. As shown in the examples, neutral vowels make the system unsymmetrical, as they are front vowels phonologically, but leave the front/back control to any grammatical front or back vowels. There is little or no change in the actual vowel quality of the neutral vowels. As a consequence, Finnish speakers often have problems with pronouncing foreign words which do not obey vowel harmony. For example, olympia is often pronounced olumpia. The position of some loans is unstandardized (e.g. chattailla/''chättäillä'' ) or ill-standardized (e.g. polymeeri, sometimes pronounced polumeeri, and autoritäärinen, which violate vowel harmony). Where a foreign word violates vowel harmony by not using front vowels because it begins with a neutral vowel, then last syllable generally counts, although this rule is irregularly followed.Catherine O. Ringen, Orvokki Heinämäki. Variation in Finnish Vowel Harmony: An OT Account. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory Volume 17, Number 2 / May, 1999. DOI: 10.1023/A:1006158818498 Experiments indicate that e.g. miljonääri always becomes (front) miljonääriä, but marttyyri becomes equally frequently both marttyyria (back) and marttyyriä (front), even by the same speaker. With respect to vowel harmony, compound words can be considered separate words. For example, syyskuu ("autumn month" i.e. September) has both u'' and ''y, but it consists of two words syys and kuu, and declines syys·kuu·ta (not *''syyskuutä''). The same goes for enclitics, e.g. taaksepäin "backwards" consists of the word taakse "to back" and ''-päin'' "-wards", which gives e.g. taaksepäinkään (not *''taaksepäinkaan'' or *''taaksepainkaan''). If fusion takes place, the vowel is harmonized by some speakers, e.g. tälläinen pro tällainen ← tämän lainen. Helsinki slang has slang words that have roots violating vowel harmony, e.g. Sörkka. This can be interpreted as Swedish influence. Hungarian Vowel types Hungarian, like its distant relative Finnish, has the same system of front, back, and intermediate (neutral) vowels. The basic rule is that words with front ("high") vowels get front vowel suffixes (kéz'be'' - in(to) the hand), back ("low") vowel words back suffixes (kar'ba'' - in(to) the arm). The only essential difference in classification between Hungarian and Finnish is that Hungarian does not observe the difference between Finnish 'ä' æ and 'e' e – the Hungarian front vowel 'e' æ is the same as the Finnish front vowel 'ä'. Behaviour of neutral vowels Intermediate or neutral vowels are usually counted as front ones, since they are formed that way, the difference being that neutral vowels can occur along with back vowels in Hungarian word bases (e.g. r'é'p'''a' carrot, ''k'o'cs'i'' car). The basic rule is that words with neutral and back vowels usually take back suffixes (e.g. répá|ban in a carrot, kocsi|ban in a car). The suffix rules for words with both kinds of suffixes are the following: * The last syllable counts: ''sofő'r|h'ö'z, nü'a'nsz|sz'a'l, gener'á'l|'á's, októb'e'r|b'e'n'' ** A regular exception is ''i/í and é'' (but not usually ''e): they are transparent for the rule, so only the other sounds will be taken into consideration, e.g. p'''a'pír|h'o'''z, k'u'plé|h'o'z, m'a'rék|h'o'z, k'o'nflis|h'o'z'' * Some words can take either front or back suffixes: ''f'a'rmer|b'a'n'' or ''farm'e'r|b'e'n'' Suffixes in multiple forms While most grammatical suffixes in Hungarian come in either one form (e.g. ''-kor) or two forms (front and back, e.g. ''-ban/-ben''), some suffixes have an additional form for front rounded vowels (such as ö, ő, ü and ű''), e.g. ''hoz/-hez/-höz. An example on basic numerals: Altaic languages Mongolian Mongolian is similar. Front vowels in Mongolian are considered feminine, while back vowels are considered masculine. Tatar Tatar has no neutral vowels. The vowel é is found only in loanwords. Other vowels also could be found in loanwords, but they are seen as Back vowels. Tatar language also has a rounding harmony, but it isn't represented in writing. O and ö could be written only in the first syllable, but vowels they mark could be pronounced in place where ı and e are written. Kazakh Kazakh's system of vowel harmony is primarily a front/back system, but there is also a system of rounding harmony that is not represented by the orthography, which strongly resembles the system in Kyrgyz. Kyrgyz Kyrgyz's system of vowel harmony is primarily a front/back system, but there is also a system of rounding harmony. Turkish Turkish has a 2-dimensional vowel harmony system, where vowels are characterised by two features: ±front and ±rounded. Front/back harmony Turkish has two classes of vowels – front and back. Vowel harmony states that words may not contain both front and back vowels. Therefore, most grammatical suffixes come in front and back forms, e.g. Türkiyede' "in Turkey" but ''Almanyada' "in Germany". Rounding harmony In addition, there is a secondary rule that ''i and ı'' tend to become ''ü and u'' respectively after rounded vowels, so certain suffixes have additional forms. This gives constructions such as ''Türkiyedir' "it is Turkey", ''kapı'dır'' "it is the door", but gün'dür'' "it is day", palto'dur'' "it is the coat". Exceptions Compound words are considered separate words with respect to vowel harmony: vowels do not have to harmonize between members of the compound (thus forms like bu|''gün'' "this|day" = "today" are permissible). In addition, vowel harmony does not apply for loanwords and some invariant suffixes (such as ''-iyor''); there are also a few native Turkish words that do not follow the rule (such as anne "mother" or kardeş "brother/sister" which used to obey vowel harmony in their older forms, ana and karındaş, respectively). In such words suffixes harmonize with the final vowel; thus ''İstanbul'dur''' "it is İstanbul". Disharmony tends to disappear through analogy, especially within loanwords. Suffixes drop disharmony to a lesser extent, e.g. ''Hüsnü (a man's name) < previously Hüsni, from Arabic h''usnî''; müslümân "Moslem, Muslim (adj. and n.)" < *''müslimân'', from Arabic Muslim). Yokuts Vowel harmony is present in all Yokutsan languages and dialects. For instance, Yawelmani has 4 vowels (which additionally may be either long or short). These can be grouped as in the table below. In vowels in suffixes must harmonize with either or its non- counterparts or with or non- counterparts. For example, the vowel in the aorist suffix appears as when it follows a in the root, but when it follows all other vowels it appears as . Similarly, the vowel in the nondirective gerundial suffix appears as when it follows a in the root; otherwise it appears as . In addition to the harmony found in suffixes, there is a harmony restriction on word stems where in stems with more than one syllable all vowels are required to be of the same lip rounding and tongue height dimensions. For example, a stem must contain all high rounded vowels or all low rounded vowels, etc. This restriction is further complicated by (i) long high vowels being lowered and (ii) an epenthetic vowel which does not harmonize with stem vowels. Korean There are three classes of vowels in Korean: positive, negative, and neutral. These categories loosely follow the front (positive) and mid (negative) vowels. Traditionally, Korean had strong vowel harmony; however, this rule is no longer observed strictly in modern Korean. In modern Korean, it is only applied in certain cases such as onomatopoeia, adjectives, adverbs, conjugation, and interjections. The vowel ㅡ(eu) is considered a partially neutral and a partially negative vowel. There are other traces of vowel harmony in modern Korean: many native Korean words tend to follow vowel harmony such as 사람 (saram), which means person, and 부엌 (Bueok), which means kitchen. Proponents of Korean as an Altaic language use the existence of vowel harmony in Korean to support their argument. Japanese Modern Japanese and all historically recorded forms of Japanese lack clear evidence of vowel harmony, but some consider that such a process must have existed at one time. However, a consensus has not been reached. See the articles on Old Japanese and Jōdai Tokushu Kanazukai for more information. Sumerian There is some evidence for vowel harmony according to vowel height or ATR in the prefix i3/e- in inscriptions from pre-Sargonic Lagash (the specifics of the pattern have led a handful of scholars to postulate not only an /o/ phoneme, but even an and, most recently, an )Smith, Eric J M. 2007. -ATR "Harmony and the Vowel Inventory of Sumerian". Journal of Cuneiform Studies, volume 57 Many cases of partial or complete assimilation of the vowel of certain prefixes and suffixes to one in the adjacent syllable are reflected in writing in some of the later periods, and there is a noticeable though not absolute tendency for disyllabic stems to have the same vowel in both syllables.Michalowski, Piotr (2008): "Sumerian". In: Woodard, Roger D. (ed.) The Ancient Languages of Mesopotamia, Egypt and Aksum. Cambridge University Press. P.17 What appears to be vowel contraction in hiatus (*/aa/, */ia/, */ua/ > a, */ae/ > a, */ue/ > u, etc.) is also very common. Other languages Vowel harmony occurs to some degree in many other languages, such as * Akan languages (tongue root position) * several Bantu languages such as: ** Standard Lingala (height) ** Kgalagadi (heigt)Derek Nurse, Gérard Philippson, The Bantu languages, Routledge, 2003. ISBN 0700711341 ** Malila (height)Constance Kutsch Lojenga Two types of vowel harmony in Malila (M.24), http://www.fflch.usp.br/dl/wocal6special/downloads/Lojenga.pdf ** Phuthi (right-to-left and right-to-left) ** Southern Sotho (right-to-left and right-to-left) ** Northern Sotho (right-to-left and right-to-left) ** Tswana (right-to-left and right-to-left) * Bezhta * Coeur d'Alene (tongue root position and height) * Coosan languages * Dusun languages * Igbo (tongue root position) * Maiduan languages * Manchu * Nez Percé * Nilotic languages * Andalusian Spanish * Takelma * Telugu * Tibetan * Utian languages * Valencian * Warlpiri Other types of harmony Although vowel harmony is the most well-known harmony, not all types of harmony that occur in the world's languages involve only vowels. Other types of harmony involve consonants (and is known as consonant harmony). Rarer types of harmony are those that involve tone or both vowels and consonants (e.g. postvelar harmony). Vowel-consonant harmony Some languages have harmony processes that involve an interaction between vowels and consonants. For example, Chilcotin has a phonological process known as vowel flattening (i.e. post-velar harmony) where vowels must harmonize with uvular and pharyngealized consonants. Chilcotin has two classes of vowels: * "flat" vowels * non-"flat" vowels Additionally, Chilcotin has a class of pharyngealized "flat" consonants . Whenever a consonant of this class occurs in a word, all preceding vowels must be flat vowels. If flat consonants do not occur in a word, then all vowels will be of the non-flat class: Other languages of this region of North America (the Plateau culture area), such as St'át'imcets, have similar vowel-consonant harmonic processes. Languages with vowel harmony * Altaic languages * Hungarian language * Finnish language * Uralic languages (standard Estonian has lost its vowel harmony, the front vowels occurring only in the first (stressed) syllable) * Turkic languages * Korean language See also * Consonant harmony * Metaphony * Germanic umlaut * I-mutation References Bibliography * Jacobson, Leon Carl. (1978). DhoLuo vowel harmony: A phonetic investigation. Los Angeles: University of California. * Krämer, Martin. (2003). Vowel harmony and correspondence theory. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. * Li, Bing. (1996). Tungusic vowel harmony: Description and analysis. The Hague: Holland Academic Graphics. * * * Shahin, Kimary N. (2002). Postvelar harmony. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Pub. * Smith, Norval; & van der Hulst, Harry (Eds.). (1988). Features, segmental structure and harmony processes (Pts. 1 & 2). Dordrecht: Foris. ISBN 90-6765-399-3 (pt. 1), ISBN 90-6765-430-2 (pt. 2 ) . * Vago, Robert M. (Ed.). (1980). Issues in vowel harmony: Proceedings of the CUNY Linguistic Conference on Vowel Harmony, 14 May 1977. Amsterdam: J. Benjamins. * Vago, Robert M. (1994). Vowel harmony. In R. E. Asher (Ed.), The Encyclopedia of language and linguistics (pp. 4954–4958). Oxford: Pergamon Press. * External links * HungarianReference.com: section on vowel harmony in Hungarian - Hungarian grammar guide. Category:Assimilation Category:Vowel harmony languages br:Hesonerezh vogalennek ca:Harmonia vocàlica cv:Сингармонизм cs:Vokálová harmonie de:Vokalharmonie el:Φωνηεντική αρμονία es:Armonía vocálica eo:Vokala harmonio fr:Harmonie vocalique ko:모음조화 it:Armonia vocalica hu:Magánhangzó-harmónia mn:Эгшиг зохицох ёс nl:Klinkerharmonie ja:母音調和 no:Vokalharmoni nn:Vokalharmoni pl:Harmonia samogłosek pt:Harmonia vocálica ro:Armonie vocalică ru:Сингармонизм fi:Vokaalisointu sv:Vokalharmoni tt:Sínharmonizm uk:Сингармонізм zh:元音和谐律